GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M395X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 111 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M395X should in theory be a small bit superior to the GeForce GTX 280 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 18304 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X will be a lot (approximately 92%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44384 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X should be a bit (approximately 20%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3872 (20%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.